[Allan Hood]

The Spore Drive is fake, a red herring for whatever they're really researching. An early iteration of the Excelsior transwarp project maybe

Wow, why do you say that? You think it's a decoy?

[Strathkin]

The Spore Drive is fake, a red herring for whatever they're really researching. An early iteration of the Excelsior transwarp project maybe

Well Noram... I think your quotation in your signature likely says it best. They should have stopped when the first person suggested the whole spore theory from the Mushroom Science guy's TedX speech. But were clearly now in the... Let's keep going stage and see where it takes us.

Hopefully they've at least done a little diligence trying to tie the two parts with other scientists/engineers: #1 the proposed Intergalactic Spores and if it even represents a network consciousness. #2 How it enables a singularity, wormhole or jump to initiate; let alone a stable one going to the desired location.

Perhaps in time our views about of the spore drive will change... ...I also don't like they changed the Klingon's. Regardless I suspect in time it's likely going to introduce many unwanted side effects. If its not just for Stamet's whose also undergone genetic manipulation and we've seen him already changing... ...but possibly to a lessor extend Michael, Tilley, or the Captain whom we've already seen developing a few issues slowly which later has the project abandoned... ...as it has no place in the future Starfleet timeline of TOS, Movies, TNG, DS9, Voyager or TNG Movies.

Too many things make too little sense about this far more than many other trek concepts that really stretch this idea.

I just wish we had a more forward looking Star Trek series created after Voyager / TNG Movies... Transwarp or Slipstream which at least have a possible explanation based on existing Canon might allow travel to expanded parts of the universe to encounter new friends, foes and species. I didn't mind Enterprise but when they went back in the timeline they didn't even last 5 full seasons and I fear Discovery may have the same fate.

I'd rather see a more forward looking series that takes place after the TNG Movies even if with a new Crew they could easily bring Back Q Junior if they wanted to from time to time.

[Sul-Matuul]

I strongly suspect that the reason we don't have such tech in the "future" ST shows and films is because something goes catastrophically wrong with it. Then as a result Starfleet wipes all records of it from their archives and it it buried in secrecy. Perhaps the mere thought of the genetic manipulation will be the end of it.

I'm hoping it does something like open a mirror universe portal, or throw the Discovery into the wrong timeline or something. I don't think it's the worst technobabble nonsense we've ever had on an ST show (cough....Threshold.....cough) but i do think it has potential as a very questionable or dangerous piece of gear.

[arcanecowboy]

"The idea of using horizontally transferred DNA for space travel is so nutty, so bad, that it's not even wrong. Even if tardigrades could absorb foreign DNA (they can't), how the heck is this supposed to give them the ability to tap into the (wildly implausible) intergalactic spore network? DNA that's been taken up through HGT isn't connected to the source any longer. This is no more plausible than asserting that people could connect to the mushroom network by eating a plate of mushrooms. And how would the space-traveling tardigrade take the entire ship with it? Are we supposed to assume it's creating some kind of mushroom-DNA field?"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevens.../#36bb6f671b37

Yes.


But, seriously, Treknology. Is there even any evidence for this mycelial network to exist? How is this an worse than TOS Apollo or TNG's Q?

[Allan Hood]

Yes.
But, seriously, Treknology. Is there even any evidence for this mycelial network to exist? How is this an worse than TOS Apollo or TNG's Q?

A mycelial network is real in science. In real life, it forms connections between plant hosts to transfer carbon and nutrients. It also creates a food-web in the soil for invertebrates and microorganisms. It real life, it's all based off the symbiotic relationship between a fungal symbiont and the roots of various plants. It seems they just changed it from traveling through soil to traveling through subspace? Why would DNA travel instantaneously?

On the other hand, Apollo was just an explorer who visited Earth five thousand years ago, making him and his crew to be 'gods.' This taps into how people think that our ancient religions are based off alien visitations.

Then with the Q, they live on an extra-dimensional plane of existence and worried that humans would one day surpass them, speaking of evolution. All of this I think is based off Carl Sagan's Flatland, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0. Instead of being from a 4th dimension, Q could be from a 10th or higher.

I don't mind it AS LONG AS they play by the rules already established. Take what we know already and then build on that. Tardigrades DO NOT absorb foreign DNA and why would this give them the ability to tap into the intergalactic spore network? A space-traveling tardigrade wouldn't be able to take the entire ship.

It seems they are messing with things that we already understand in science and are changing them. I haven't felt like this since the episode, "Genesis," where the crew de-evolve into prehistoric creatures after a medical treatment. I haven't seen it since I was a kid haha but I couldn't stand it for the same reasons. How could activating dormant T-cells, including the introns, de-evolve people to animals they didn't evolve from in the first place?